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dark acacia 04-05-2013 09:26 PM

LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
This time I'm after something a little different:

Jazuela 04-06-2013 11:37 AM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 


You don't have the option to -not- roleplay - your character is a character at all times, you are never -not- your character while playing the game, that's how it's coded. You can chat in the chat channels OOC all you want, but in the game screen itself, you (the player) don't exist.

Skills and levels improve with use, and to some limited extent with potions you can win through finding loot around the game world through discovery (or purchasing them for game-coin in the game-mall).

No permadeath.

No training parties at all.

PvP is an option that you can toggle on once during each ascension. Once it's on, it stays on til your next ascension. I've never used this option, and many players don't use it. I don't know what PvE stands for.

Commerce - there's a whole OOC chat channel (all chat channels are OOC) devoted to trade, plus there's the in-game mall, and there's auto-sell for getting rid of junk you don't need and don't have much value to other people (like bat wings, for example).

Botting is allowed, and there are even special buff-bots in the game you can send game-coin to, to get magickal buffs to help you with your own "farming" or grinding sessions.

Ghostcat 04-06-2013 03:39 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
Isn't kingdom of loathing the silly stick figure game?

dark acacia 04-06-2013 04:18 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
Yes it is, and I played it years ago.

By commerce I don't mean spamming the auction channel with lf or wtb. I'm interested in production of goods from raw materials; for instance, a character could do any part of the following: mine metal, smelt metal into ore, forge a sword from the ore, then maybe enchant the sword or decorate it, then sell it, with each part of the chain adding value to the work in process.

Ghostcat 04-06-2013 04:32 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
Sounds like you would have liked Lusternia, maybe.

At least, I think it was Lusternia. Umm, player run economy. Everything was done by players, from material collection to making parts, to putting the parts together.

Crafting was more like combat than usual.

I wonder what happened to it. I tried it once, but there were very few players and I made a bad class choice.

Still, you should try sticking with games for a while before deciding you need to try a new one. A lot games (Especially RP ones) take time to get going.

dark acacia 04-06-2013 08:12 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
I played Achaea and two of its sister games (one was possibly Lusternia) for a while and didn't like them. I remember that leveling up as a Paladin in Achaea was a lot like taking a college course with a job interview, and I didn't like how PvP was purely a war of attrition. Also, it seemed in one of the games like people just hung out in one spot until they heard the call to defend their city, then they'd fight and go back as if nothing happened.

I do stick with games for a while; several weeks if they don't get boring right away. I've been in Shadowgate for quite some time now, and I recently started Unwritten Legends. I'm phasing out of Shadowgate for a few reasons, and I don't imagine that I'll be in UL much longer unless that improves (hence why I'm asking for a new game now).

Jazuela 04-06-2013 11:16 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
It really sounds like what you're looking for, with the exception of the permadeath issue, is an RPI. But you don't want permadeath, so that leaves RPIs out of the equation. They fit all your other criteria though, and I don't know of any other type of games that do. Armageddon in particular has a robust crafting system, you won't find people mindlessly grinding, or level-whoring, or hunting parties among people for whom it would make very little IC sense for them to hunt in the first place (such as, a city-based assassin, for example).

The roleplay can get stressful at times, but usually it's the scene itself and whatever rp people are putting into it, that's stressful. Not much of the childish OOC shenanigans you sometimes find in some games (though these shenanigans occur in ALL games to some extent - Arm isn't innocent by any means, but I've found there's simply less of it there). Plus it's free with no perks for pay. Any donations go toward the cost of the server, no one gets paid and you get nothing in return for the donation except the admin's thanks and the knowledge that youv'e helped keep the game running. They don't ever ask for donations either.

Death is permanent, however because of the in-game culture and possibilities for play, it's not nearly as "traumatic" as that might sound. It stings, definitely, when you lose a character. Especially if you manage to have one last awhile and form tight RP groups. But when they die, you pick something new, something different, something you haven't tried yet and were wondering what it'd be like. Maybe a different city, or maybe not a city at all. Maybe you want to try and play a character who gets neck-deep into politics; maybe you want to try a sneaky back-alley thief who spends most of his life in near-starvation and is looking for a way out of the alleys and into respectability.

It's because of that variety, that regular players of Arm don't generally get too bent out of shape when their characters die. Because they usually have another concept lined up and ready to submit the next day.

The combat system started out as a diku, but has been tweaked significantly. It's still recognizeable if you're familiar with diku, but you would also notice the differences immediately.

The learning curve for Arm is steep, but there's a helper system where you can ask veteran volunteers to give you assistance on pretty much anything from syntax on moving around, to pointing out the helpfiles, to what you're supposed to do when a guy in a blue robe, flanked by a pair of half-giant soldiers, comes into the bar, to how to find the grocer, to how to find a method of earning coins.

So you have your choice of self-reliance, using the help files and guides on the web, or contacting a helper (usually live via a special help chat set up on their main website).

It might not be your thing afterall, and it's definitely not for everyone. But the worst that happens if you don't like it, is you waste a few hours of your life trying. You do that anyway when you play internet games :)

Jazuela 04-07-2013 09:49 AM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
I just re-read the OP and realize the last criteria is that botting be allowed so he can read a book while his character mines.

That, combined with the "no permadeath" issue, eliminates RPIs entirely. Botting isn't allowed, and in many cases, can result in your character dying since you're not paying attention to the scrab in the next room looking for its next meal. In an RPI, it's expected that when you're logged in, you're paying attention to the screen, and if you want to read a book, you log off and read the book. On the other hand - skill-grinding isn't efficient, and farming for loot has its limits (the shopkeepers will only buy a certain amount of stuff in any given period of time and your character can only carry so much excess before he can't move even 1 room away).

dentin 04-07-2013 10:56 AM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
I do agree with the RP and botting being somewhat exclusive. Typically people would throw out botting when this kind of conflict arises, but if you throw out RP instead, Alter Aeon matches all of the requirements.

IMHO, the RP requirement itself is inconsistent: the OP wants mandatory RP, but drama and politics is the heart of most RP games from what I've seen.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

dark acacia 04-07-2013 12:24 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
Alter Aeon is an on-and-off game for me. It's a good game, but I tend to take breaks from it now and then. I'll be back someday.

I realize that my RP requirement seems inconsistent, but really I'm tired of the bickering and infighting among characters which inevitably crops up, whether or not I'm playing a spitfire. I think the best way to describe what I'm looking for is PvE rather than PvP role play. In PvE role play, the plot surrounds active threats to the PCs, or the plot is about getting the PCs to band together for some reason. In PvP role play it seems like the PCs are left to their own devices more often than not, and role play tends to turn into couples breaking off for romances or people finding ways to get on each other's nerves.

Botting isn't important to me, but ideally I'd like a game with some latitude here. I played a game where you could spend 1-2 hours having your character hit a training dummy to improve melee weapon skills by typing "attack dummy" and waiting, but you couldn't automate all of the commands necessary to improve thrown weapons ("throw knife, throw knife, get knife, get knife, wield knife, wield knife, repeat") because all those commands had to be typed in. Training with melee weapons like that was perfectly legal because the game computed rounds automatically, but using a script to do the same thing with throwing weapons was not.

Verbannon 04-07-2013 01:28 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
You will probably need to look in the Pay to play games then as those are the only ones I can think of that could possibly afford to have that amount of interaction between the programmers and the players, as it would essentially be a full time job for the programmer to achieve that.

Either that or instead of a Mud, you'll have to find a living game.

dark acacia 04-07-2013 02:04 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
It's unreasonable to expect a real person or group of people to be DMs 24/7, and that's not what I'm looking for either. I'd like the sort of role play where the DM runs periodic events, and between events the PCs have to deal with whatever the problem is. Maybe over the course of the event period the PCs are coordinating their efforts, making preparations, reconciling differences with enemies so everyone can focus on the real problem, and so forth.

If RP just gets into a pattern of who's two-timing who, who is making out with who in what public place, or so-and-so controls the city guards and can make life miserable for the people he doesn't like, that's where I lose interest.

Jazuela 04-07-2013 02:18 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
What about "So and so controls the city guards and can make life miserable for the people he doesn't like, until someone with influence gets in touch with so and so's boss and so and so gets the smack down."

Or how about

"So and so who controls the city guards TRIES to make life miserable for this one guy, who turns out to be a powerful mindbender and convinces so and so to take a flying leap off the shield wall and into a pack of hungry gith."

In short - in a permadeath game, there is ALWAYS someone more powerful than you. If you're the head honcho, SOMEONE will eventually become more powerful, and you will eventually cease to exist. That's part of why permadeath games appeal to that particular niche of players - because you're not stuck with the same bosses who have the same grudges against the same lower-class people for the entirety of your time playing the game. Sometimes you get to be the boss, sometimes someone else does. Sometimes you are the boss and get along swell with the minions, sometimes not. And sometimes you're a minion who gets along fine with the boss and sometimes not. It's up to you to roleplay a response to the situation, not just say "oh he's mean" and jump ship just because you can't handle conflict.

dark acacia 04-07-2013 03:48 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
Because that's not an adventure to me.

I want to have fun adventures. I want to throw the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. I don't want the kind of stress that comes with having to deal with some idiot on a power trip who can kill a PC at will just because they disagreed on the color of the carpeting.

I want my character crawling from room to room (MUD room, that is) just to get a morsel of food to get just a little more strength to press on. I want evil demons on flying horses scouring the countryside for the MacGuffin I'm trying to destroy.

I want companions who come from different backgrounds and have different attitudes and perspectives to come together to fight the great world-ending evil through very credible hardships and difficulty, and not win just because there were a few high level PCs in the party who did the tanking and dealt the DPS.

When it's all done, I want songs sung about our noble deeds. I want that kind of role play development.

I don't want to sit in a bar while some 70-year old man makes out with his winsome young half-elf maiden. I don't want to read purple prose on the character concept forum about the woman who became a successful whore after getting roped into the business and then killing her pimp. I don't want to farm mobs to max out my XPS.

plamzi 04-07-2013 05:16 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
How old are you?

Jazuela 04-07-2013 06:08 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
Well then I'll refer you back to my Kingdom of Loathing response, which (at the time) was meant in jest. Now, I'm serious. What you want is Kingdom of Loathing. It's fun, it's zero pressure, it's no drama, you get to kill the MacGuffin and fight evil demons and have pets who assist you, and you get fart jokes interspersed with the memes and movie quotes.

Orrin 04-07-2013 06:20 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
You should just go right ahead and make a MUD of your own with the exact features that you want.

dark acacia 04-07-2013 06:22 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
Old enough to know not to troll strangers on the Internet.

If your game passes off semi-private couples romance and endless bickering in the town square in between sessions of farming mobs for XP as "adventure," I don't think you know what adventure is.

Verbannon 04-07-2013 07:43 PM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 

You want a tabletop RPG game. Maybe you should try out a living game then? D&D has one. And a few others do. Because I doubt anything else can fit your criteria.

plamzi 04-08-2013 09:56 AM

Re: LFM: skill-based game with RP
 
I doubt that any existing game will fit his criteria, living or unliving. Notice that he wants highly literary RP in which there are no "power trips". So, basically he wants to play with Tolkien-level DM's and peers whose only aim is to weave an astonishing tapestry of co-ordinated genius just the way he wants, for his pleasure.

Setting aside for a moment the obvious fact that people are on power trips all the time, in life, as well as in RP, and many can't ever be paid enough to serve in that kind of capacity, there is still the logistical issue of finding and hiring a lot of literary talent.

Making his own MUD will only get him half the way there. Most of the "features" he lists depend on other people behaving just the way he wants them to, while also oozing talent. Throw in a punishing environment that would turn off most other players, so this game would basically have to exist for him only. So, obviously, in a real world, we're talking a lot of money. A lot.

The reason I asked was, we all have a dream game, a dream job, a dream house or tropical island, etc. But most of us know enough by the age of 8 to know that unless we are heirs to a multi-million dollar estate, there's no point in discussing our dreams with strangers.


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